DoJ Request for More CALEA Surveillance Criticized
Federal law enforcement authorities have “overreached” in seeking more surveillance access to wireless packet technology, commenters told the FCC in filings Wednesday. The comments responded to a petition by the Justice Department, FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration for an FCC ruling that an industry standard for law enforcement access to CDMA2000 technology doesn’t meet Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act standards. Justice is out of line to make that demand, industry and user groups said, contesting language in the petition that appears to indicate that the Department wants the rulemaking applied to other technology as well.
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“It is obvious that the petition has overreached in at least two material respects,” said the U.S. Internet Service Provider Association. The petition “requests performance and reliability capabilities that have already been rejected by the Commission as not required by CALEA,” the group said. The petition also asks that the FCC apply any new rules developed through this rulemaking to “other published standards where the same capabilities are at issue,” the group said, citing the Justice Department’s language, which the ISP body said indicates the agency “is seeking to modify all industry standards applicable to a wide variety of technologies by simply showing that one industry standard applicable to one kind of technology is deficient.”
The actions Justice seeks would go “far beyond what is allowed” by CALEA, said a filing by the American Library Association, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Media Access Project, the Center for Democracy & Technology, the VON Coalition and others. The law enforcement agencies are trying “an end run around both CALEA and the Administrative Procedures Act by extending any rules far beyond the CDMA2000 context that is ostensibly the focus of DoJ’s petition,” they said. Even if confined to the J-STD-025-B standard for CDMA2000, the actions DoJ seeks would violate CALEA, the group said. Among other things, the petition seeks to apply CALEA requirements to the information services portion of Internet access, though FCC rules upheld by a federal court have said CALEA applies only to the transmission part, the group said.
The Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions, one of the J-STD-025-B standard’s developers, believes that standard has no “inherent technical deficiencies.” Further, the group said, the standard was approved in an “open and consensus-based process” in which the FBI participated. The standard was developed by ATIS and the Telecommunications Industry Association.
Cisco said the law enforcement agencies want a remedy for their “apparent inability to receive high-bandwidth content intercepts” that would “substantially and adversely affect the development and implementation of new, innovative high-bandwidth services.” Cisco, which makes equipment that stands to be affected if the Justice petition is granted, said the department is proposing that telecommunications providers “either buffer… content for later retrieval or provide law enforcement collocation rights.” That would violate CALEA, which holds law enforcement, not providers, responsible “for the delivery arrangements of intercepted communications.” The solution sought would require congressional action, Cisco said.
AT&T doesn’t use CDMA2000 in its wireless services but even so thinks the petition, which “lacks merit,” should be denied, it said. “The capabilities that DOJ seeks are not authorized by the CALEA statute” and would impose “substantial and unjustified costs that ultimately would have to be borne by ratepayers,” the company said. The FCC definitely should reject the departments “suggestion” that any new standards approved by the FCC apply in other areas as well.
Verizon is “willing to work with” Justice on concerns about intercept ability -- but “changes in the timing and manner of delivery of intercept data to law enforcement” must conform with CALEA “and not impose prohibitive cost limitations,” the company said. If the FCC does add new requirements to the J-STD-025-B standard, “it should not simply apply those requirements across the board to all other standards,” Verizon said.